How can public-private partnerships help deliver better services? Find out on June 1st, the World Bank Group will launch a 4-week FREE Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the key principles of PPPs and how they can be used to address the infrastructure gap in emerging markets. Participants will learn from practitioners, government officials, and academics with field experience, hearing firsthand about the opportunities and challenges of procuring and maintaining infrastructure services through effective PPPs.
 

Register today at: https://www.coursera.org/course/effectiveppp 

AFTERSHOCK: A Humanitarian Crisis Game is a boardgame that explores the interagency cooperation needed to address the emergency and early recovery phase of a complex humanitarian crisis. Although the game takes place in the fictional country of Carana, it is loosely modeled on disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and 2010 Haiti earthquake.  The primary objective of all players is to address the needs of the local population.

TIDES Director David Becker served as an advisor, and TIDES hopes to bring AFTERSHOCK to NDU for a demonstration game (or three or four). Contact us if you are interested in using the game in training. 

The game has already been adopted for regular use by the Chilean Joint Peacekeeping Operations Center, who have asked for a Spanish language version:

https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/aftershock-at-the-chilean-joint-peacekeeping-operations-center/

It is also part of the curriculum of the Canadian Disaster and Humanitarian Response Training Program:

https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/aftershocking-the-canadian-disaster-and-humanitarian-response-training-program/ 

The United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) has launched a project to improve the availability, quality and accessibility of geospatial information as well as the coordination and collaboration among all stakeholders during an emergency. UN-GGIM has created a survey to collect inputs/views on the topic from people who have been involved in recent response efforts (since 2010). Click here to complete the survey, the deadline is 15 May. Special thanks to our friends from WWHGD for passing along this important announcement!